Imogen Ayris: Bronzed and Brave

Bronzed and brave

The Shore’s Commonwealth Games Medalist Imogen Ayris

Commonwealth Games medal-winning pole vaulter Imogen Ayris met Heather Barker Vermeer at Devonport’s Fish Kitchen to debrief on digging deep and flying high in international sport.

Using crutches is helpful in building upper body strength, Imogen Ayris is finding. Although an unwelcome mode of transport for the newly minted Commonwealth Games medallist, this athlete has a habit of turning travesty into treasure.

Born at North Shore Hospital and raised in Northcote Point, in the family home where she still lives, Ayris opted for Takapuna Grammar School following Northcote Primary and Takapuna Intermediate. A certain Eliza McCartney was a senior pupil at TGS as Ayris was weighing up her high school options.

“I was big into netball at the time; I always wanted to be a Silver Fern. Most Harbour players were going to Westlake but when I did my TGS visit, I liked it. I knew Eliza was there and had just gone to World Youth Games, so she kind of drew me in!”

As a promising track and field athlete, as well as netball player and gymnast, Ayris held McCartney in high regard and came to know her through the local sport scene. The switch to athletics came after Ayris found she was acing meets without any preparation for the sprint hurdles, long jump, and triple jump events she was entering.

“I’d just go along to club nights at Takapuna Athletics Club, without doing any training. I couldn’t – I was already jam-packed!” Up to 20 hours per week gymnastics training alongside rep netball, competing in basketball, volleyball and ‘any other land-based sport I could’, didn’t leave space in the training mix.

“I’d started to realise I was quite good at athletics, though. So I went along to North Island Secondary School Champs in Y9 and did really, really well, with next to no training. It was at that stage that I decided to drop gymnastics in favour of athletics.”

Training at the Millennium Institute in Mairangi Bay, Ayris was working on improving her sprint hurdling and triple jumping techniques when she was presented with an idea.

“My coach asked if I’d like to try pole vault. Eliza was training there at the time. I knew who she was because I’d seen her at school but being in Year 9 and her being a Year 13, we didn’t really mix.”

Ayris was introduced to pole vault specialist Jeremy McColl, and he’s been her coach ever since. Fellow young North Shore athlete Liv McTaggart also got bitten by the pole-vaulting bug around the same time, taking up the sport the same year.

Launching yourself metres into the air while only clutching onto a freestanding pole, demands an unusual amount of courage and commitment, in anyone’s books. So how did she begin?

“At first, you just get used to holding a pole, having it in your hand, stepping over it and swinging it. Then I started to get used to landing on my back. Then they chuck a bungy cord up and say, ‘get over that’! Eventually they switch that out for a bar and off you go!” Easy?

“I did pick it up really quickly, I found. I really enjoyed it. I soon realised I was finding it addictive!”

When McCartney needed competitors for a local pole vault meet, Imogen found herself a novice addition to the bill. “I didn’t even have spikes on, I was just winging it in my running shoes,” she laughs. Clearing heights up to 2.90m in that first competition she felt was ‘a "decent start".

Still a newcomer to the sport, she had a pop at secondary school nationals and jumped 3.50m, placing third. She also placed second in triple jump.

In 2014, she entered U18 and U20 nationals, and won both. This led to her flying to Australia to compete in the Australian U18 and U20 National Championships. Again, she won both age groups, notching up a new personal best of 3.75m. “It all started to happen,” she smiles.

Nudging up the heights, she reached 4m at age 15. “I knew it was coming,” she recalls. “…that big four metre mark. I first jumped it at secondary school champs, which felt quite a big deal.”

In Year 12, she headed to Germany for her first overseas invitational comp. She came third. The joy of achieving a securing World Junior Championship qualification height of 4.05m during an Auckland comp later that season, fell fast. Landing on the track during a pre-comp training jump left her with a significant heel injury and a heavy heart.

“I was in excruciating pain. I went along on comp day with every intention of competing but knowing that it was unlikely given the injury I was carrying. I could barely stand on my foot – it was purple! Anyway, I took some strong pain killers and stepped onto the track for what I could manage as a warm-up jog and thought, ‘I’m doing this!’”

At the astonishment of her coach, and herself, she somehow found it within herself to manage a full run up and got over the bar, at 3.95m. “I was hopping away from the mat. I couldn’t even walk properly. It was straight back into the ice afterwards. I’m not even sure how I did that!”

World University Games in Italy followed in 2019, 4.11m cleared. “Leading into 2020, I was jumping really well. I made a 4.30m PB and things were going great.” She won the New Zealand nationals and was planning to go to Sydney for Australian nationals and to Queensland for the Brisbane Track Classic when the pandemic hit.

Despite lockdown landing when she felt her star was on the ascendancy, Ayris used her downtime wisely, working on her baseline fitness and focusing her attention on her science studies, with her academic abilities supporting her aspirations of becoming a doctor.

Frustration became a factor once Auckland athletes were unable

Imogen at home on the Shore with her dog, Boo.

to compete alongside other Kiwis, following regional lockdown. But once Ayris was back amongst it, in 2021, she was pleased to find she could still clear the same heights she could pre-pandemic.

In December last year, she began chasing qualification for August’s Commonwealth Games and the Covid-postponed World Athletics Championships, in July She jumped three Commonwealth Games qualifying heights of 4.45m over summer but needed more jumps to solidify this and make ‘Worlds’. “I was looking really good,” she says, “until I had a pole snap in training. It’s never happened to me before. It shouldn’t happen, but sometimes does in elite pole vaulting.”

Splitting the webbing between the palm and thumb, precisely where the pole sits in her hand, meant immediate stitches, then rehab on her grip strength. Intense physio work and some miraculous healing left Ayris feeling ready to compete again just two weeks later. Nationals had fortuitously been pushed back, working in her favour. “But I failed the 4.45m height. I was still hanging in there in the top 32, though, and got conditionally selected for Worlds, which I was very excited about!”

Second place at the Oceania Athletics Championships in early June gained Ayris the points she needed. “That was enough to get me to the World Champs. That was really exciting, especially because that was never actually the goal! I’d just wanted to be able to get back into jumping again after injury.”

Without expectation, she headed to the World Athletics

Championships in Oregon in June, feeling in the form of her life. On landing in the USA, she found she’d gained significant sprint speed. “I’d done a tough three-week training block at home prior to leaving for the US. When I got there, I found I’d gained a whole load of speed. The temparture change from winter to summer was nice to train in and I just hadn’t seen the speed impact of my recent training until I arrived there. That meant there was this disconnect, mentally and physically, because I suddenly had all this extra power. It was great, but I was, like, ‘OK, so how am I now going to manage this?’ Despite warming up well, and enjoying mixing with the world’s best athletes in the athletes’ village as well as the stadium, when it came to competing, Ayris failed to fire. She ended up ‘no Imogen sharing her medal success on a school visit last month. (Photo: TGS sports department) heighting’. “The biggest thing for me was that I didn’t really know what had gone wrong. I’d felt so good. I’d warmed up well. But I found I just couldn’t clear the bar. I was quite upset after that.” Discussions with her sports psychologist followed; Ayris questioning her ability to perform, while harbouring concerns about the judgements of others. “I started worrying that people would say I couldn’t compete on the big stage. It started to get into my head. And I knew I only had two weeks before the Commonwealth Games. “My sports psych reminded me of a few things, like the fact that everybody I care about still loves me, regardless of how I jump. And that I, and they, know what I’m capable of. That was important in helping me gain perspective.”

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Imogen enjoying some downtime on the Shore.

Ayris relaxed, spending downtime with fellow Kiwi athletes ahead of Birmingham’s Commonwealth Games. “I didn’t really get nervous at all, right up until it was time to jump. You warm up, get introduced to the crowd and there’s a lot of time waiting around. That’s too long to be pent up – it gets tiring! But I was so scared of ‘no heighting’ again, I knew just had to get over that bar. So when it came time to jump, I got really nervous.”

The competition opened at 3.90m, way below Ayris’s PB. She chose to come in at 4.25m. “My first attempt came, and I didn’t convert it. I saw my coach looking at me with this puzzled look. I was determined I wasn’t going to let myself leave it to my final jump to clear this height I knew I could clear. I was so determined I was going to clear that bar, whatever it took!”

On her second attempt, Ayris cleared her doubts and the bar. “The height was never the issue. For an opening jump, I knew it was relatively easy. Once I cleared that first height, I was so relieved! I just started having fun after that.”

When the fun starts, so does the success, Ayris found. (As Olympic bronze medal winner McCartney, and her now world-famous smile, can attest.) After clearing 4.35m and 4.45m, Ayris found herself alongside her fellow North Shore athlete Liv McTaggart in medal contention.

“When I realised there were just four of us left in the competition, I was like, hold on, I’ve got a chance here. Going into the final jumps, I knew if Livi missed hers, I was guaranteed a medal.

“I cried straight away! I had to jump again, but I didn’t care less what happened on that jump. I hit the bar, but I didn’t care – I’d got a medal!”

Another heart-warming Kiwi pole vaulting moment followed that of fellow TGS alumni McCartney’s at the 2016 Rio Olympics, when Ayris ran to hug McTaggart after her final jump. Pipping her compatriot to the medal podium was bittersweet for both, but a moment Ayris will never forget. She recalls looking over to her younger brother, Harry, and her boyfriend (former TGS head boy and North Shore Cricket Club premier captain, Will Clarke) in the stands. “We were all just looking at each other in disbelief before that final jump, knowing I’d won a medal. It was surreal!”

Further disbelief followed the next day, when Ayris eventually conceded to a scan on a ‘niggly’ lower limb complaint. She discovered she had been harbouring a broken foot for weeks.

“It was crushing. I went from such a high to such a low. I was aiming to improve on my Commonwealth height in European competitions following the Games. I felt like I had this momentum, like I still had this really big jump in me. As soon as I found out I was confined to a moonboot and crutches for six weeks, I just wanted to come home.”

On the plane back, she had time to think. “I had 36 hours by myself. I wound down and I was able to actually process everything that had happened. It sank in; despite the gutting injury news, I’d won a bronze medal.”

The domestic athletics season restarts in December. Once the moonboot is off, Ayris will begin training again, alongside her third year Exercise Science degree studies at Auckland University.

“I now need to qualify for the World Champs in Budapest next year,” she says. Automatic qualifying has been set at 4.71m. “I know I’m capable of getting into the 4.60s this season - I still have those big jumps waiting to come out! And 4.70m, and beyond? I wouldn’t rule it out.”

More success for local athletes

The North Shore was well represented at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Bronze medals proved to be the colour of the moment, with several local athletes returning with this shade of medal. Another former Takapuna Grammar School pupil, Jacko Gill, brought home bronze in the shot put behind Kiwi silver medallist Tom Walsh. Former Westlake Boys’ High pupil Cameron Gray won a swimming bronze medal – in the 50m butterfly. The Silver Ferns brought home bronze in the netball, with the White Ferns also matching their medal in the T20 cricket competition.

Siblings Liv and Cam McTaggart also both competed strongly, with Cam’s sixth in weightlifting adding to Liv’s fourth place in the pole vault.

In total, New Zealand brought home a record 49 medals from this year’s Birmingham Commonwealth Games: 20 gold, 12 silver and 17 bronze.

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